I had not thought of my "memory
flashes" to past moments, unlike Fr. Alexander
Schmemann in the passages quoted on Monday, as particularly religious or inspiring
spiritual insights. But he was an eminent theologian (defined here as "someone
who spends most of his time in the acquisition and conveying to others of teachings
about God") in his lifetime (1921-83), so understandably he would be more attuned
than I am to looking for theological meanings in such phenomena. But his describing
the memory flashes as connections to the "eternal now" rings true. The point is
that in our consciousness, isolated moments from the past intrude and capture
our attention and sometimes take our breath away by their clarity and realism,
transporting us to another time, another place, even another version of ourselves
so different to the present one that it takes a minute to recognize ourselves.

I'm not arguing, and I doubt that Fr.
Schmemann would have, that this occurrence of memory flashes is necessarily supernatural.
I'm sure the scientists who study the brain and its processes have natural explanations
for the flashes and I find no reason to argue with them. (It's all endorphins,
they mightmost likelyclaim.) The other side of that is that "to the
spiritual, all is spiritual" (cf. 1
Cor. 2:13-15). If God speaks to you through the Bible, the church service,
or through the large events in your life, He may (have you enough faith to say,
"He does"?) speak to you in the flashes of your past that visit you. Look at it
that way and you might learn something; that's all we're saying.

When we want to recall things, we free associate. One of the joys of good conversations
is that they inspire us to recall all sorts of things that might be worth revisitng.
Another speaker relates something that happened, which brings back somewhat similar
or radically dissimilar occurrences in our own pasts, giving them new significance
and, in a sense, new life.

If you're
a poet trying to capture the essence of the "the meadow" without the cow patties
and the insects, you dig around in your grey matter for meadows you've visited
and try to free associate your experiences into strings of words that may facilitate
others experiencing "the meadow," or even "that meadow" through your poem.

When
I was working on my unpublished Nanty Glo novel, over months of trial and error
I decided to put my protagonist, Bryan, in a perilous situation in the first chapter,
to bring out lots of character traits, geographical tidbits about the place, and
emotions while getting readers to start pulling for him. The thing Bryan and I
had in common that might have been dangerous was hitch-hiking to and from Nanty
Glo before we got our driver's licenses. I dug into my store of memories for the
most intimidating experiences I ever had while hitch-hiking (none really perilous,
but some borderline), and exploded that to 15 pages or so of fear and courage
by embellishing or asking "what might have been?" Putting the first line of a
chapter like that on the computer screen can summon a host of other memories,
and imaginings, so that even though you might have no inkling where this is going
when you write the first words, you can find yourself drawn through 15 pages of
them in what seems like no time.

But
these aren't memory flashes or much like them. Trying to "remember" memory flashes
is counter productive; they're that different than consciously recovered or "dug
out" memories. Wanting to "flash" brings something from your past to your
present, but it isn't a "flash." I wrote in the Jonal shortly after returning
from Ireland in 2001 that I was still spending time every day in Mitchellstown,
Ireland, because the time I'd spent there, unplanned because it resulted from
a car breaking down, was flashing me; I wasn't asking to go back there. Often,
when I'm doing my nightly workout at my club (and it seems to be connected to
a particular machine, though why, I have no idea), I flash to a moment in Bath,
England, when I left my brother Tom waiting at the train station while I walked
down the street to look for a B&B we could stay in within our budget that night.
Why that moment recurs, I have no idea. Why it's repeatedly called up by a particular
machine in my routine I can only guess. Endorphins, most likely.

Webmaster
Jon Kennedy

25 THINGS LEARNED
BY MIDDLE AGE

1. If you're too open-minded,
your brains will fall out.2. Don't worry about what people think; they don't
do it very often.3.  See
"Thought for today"  4.
It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat. 5. Artificial intelligence
is no match for natural stupidity.


Sent by Mary Ann Losiewcz

Thought for today

3.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage
makes you a car.

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